The Dark Hours (Harry Bosch #23)(21)

There was another piece of evidence connecting the three cases as part of the MO. During the car-ride questioning, Ballard had focused on how the men spoke and the instructions they gave Carpenter. Ballard did not prompt Carpenter with specific examples because that might lead to a false confirmation of connection. She had to ask Carpenter more generally to try to remember what had been said to her, but the young woman came through with a key connection.

“At the end, before they left, one of them — I think it was Mr. Blue — said, ‘You’re going to be all right, doll. You’ll look back on this one day and smile.’ Then he laughed and they were gone.”

Ballard had been waiting for this. The half apology at the end. The other two victims had reported the same thing, right down to the throwback vernacular of calling the victim “doll.”

“You’re sure he said that? He called you ‘doll’?”

“I’m sure. Nobody’s ever called me that before. It’s like 1980s or something.”

Ballard felt the same way, but that played against Carpenter’s estimate, based on what she had seen of her attackers’ bodies through the loose tape, that they were in their late twenties or early thirties.

There was still an hour or so of light by the time they pulled to a stop in front of the small bungalow where Carpenter lived on Deep Dell Terrace. Ballard wanted to check the house to see if she could find a point of entry and determine if it would be worth calling for a full forensic examination of the premises. She also wanted to walk the neighborhood in daylight and then return after midnight so she could judge the lighting conditions and vigilance of other residents of the hillside neighborhood.

Once inside, Ballard asked Carpenter to sit on the couch in the living room while she conducted a quick sweep of the house.

“You think they’ll come back?” Carpenter asked.

There was the tightness of fear in her voice.

“It’s not that,” Ballard said quickly. “I want to look for anything the patrol guys may have overlooked. And I want to figure out how the bad guys got in. You’re sure nothing was left open or unlocked?”

“Nothing. I’m OCD about locking the doors. I check them every night, even when I know I haven’t gone out through them.”

“Okay, just give me a few minutes.”

Ballard started moving around the house alone, pulling on a pair of latex gloves from her pocket. There was a door in the kitchen that she assumed led directly to the attached single-car garage. It had a simple push-button lock on the knob and no dead bolt. The door was currently unlocked.

“Does this door in the kitchen go to the garage?” she called out.

“Yes,” Carpenter called back. “Why?”

“It’s unlocked. Is that the way you had it?”

“I don’t think so. But I may have missed it because the trash cans are in the garage and the garage is always locked anyway.”

“You mean closed? Or closed and locked?”

“Well, closed and locked. From the outside you can’t open it without the remote.”

“Is there also an outside door into the garage? Besides the overhead door?”

“No. Just the overhead.”

Ballard decided not to open the door to the garage, even with gloves on, until Forensics checked it. It could have been the means of entry. She also had to consider that either McGee or Black had opened the door while checking the house during the initial callout. She could ask them but she knew that neither would admit to such a gaffe. She would only know for sure whether they had opened the door if one of them had left fingerprints on the knob.

Ballard decided she would view the garage last, coming in from the outside. She moved into a hallway that led to two bedrooms and a bathroom. She checked the bathroom first and saw no evidence of intrusion through the small window over the bathtub.

She moved into the master bedroom, where the assault had occurred. There she found a window that had been sealed shut by several coats of paint applied over many years. She looked at the bed. Carpenter had said she had not known of the intrusion until she woke up with one of the men on top of her and putting tape over her eyes and mouth. He then tied her hands to a railing of the bed’s brass headboard. He told her not to move or make a sound and then she heard him leave the room and open the front door for his partner.

Ballard got down on her knees and looked under the bed. It was clear except for a few books. She slid them out and saw that they were all written by female authors: Alafair Burke, Steph Cha, Ivy Pochoda. She slid them back under and got up. She swept her eyes across the room again but nothing stood out to her. She stepped back into the hallway and checked the second bedroom. This was neat and spare, obviously a guest room. The closet door was four inches ajar.

Ballard opened the closet all the way without touching the knob. Half the space was crowded with stacked cardboard boxes marked as Native Bean supplies. The other half was empty, apparently for the use of guests. She got down on her knees again to study the carpeted floor. She saw nothing on the carpet but there was a distinct pattern in the weave that was indicative of recent vacuuming. Still on her knees, she leaned back on her heels and called for Cindy to come to the room.

She came right away.

“What is it?”

“You said you have no Dustbuster, no vacuum at all, right?”